By Amy Kazmin in Mumbai
Published: January 30 2009 02:00 Last updated: January 30 2009 02:00
With its gritty depiction of Mumbai's underbelly - and an unlikely rags-to-riches tale of resilience and hope, the film Slumdog Millionaire has gained critical acclaim and box office success round the world, plus 10 Oscar nominations.
Despite the film's pedigree as a British production, its international success has enthused many urban Indians, now embracing it as a triumph of India's cinema industry, which generates about 900 films a year.
In Indian media interviews, Danny Boyle, the British director, has insisted his work is a mainstream Indian "feel-good" film, given its romantic love story and underdog hero who overcomes tremendous adversity to secure triumph and, of course, the girl.
Yet, among directors and producers in Mumbai - the heart of India's film industry - the success of Slumdog Millionaire has generated both excitement and angst over Bollywood's relationship with global audiences.
To some industry players, the film's Indian theme will help give national cinema greater international credibility and distribution, just as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon demonstrated to Hollywood distributors the potential appeal of Chinese films in the west.
"More people in western offices will now be willing to look at and listen to things coming out of India," says famed Indian producer, Ramesh Sippy, whose Warner Brothers-backed film, Chandni Chowk to China , has failed to shine in its first week according to Box Office Mojo.
Yet others have felt anguished that it has taken a British production to successfully interpret India for a western audience.
"It's not an Indian film," says Amit Khanna, a former songwriter and media producer who is now chairman of Reliance Entertainment. "We are trying to appropriate it, but the vision is western. It's a film about India, but it's not an Indian film."
Jag Mundra, an independent filmmaker who has directed several "issues-based" films, such as Provoked and Shoot on Site , believes Slumdog Millionaire - with its cast of relatively unknown actors - could not yet be made in today's Bollywood, which remains obsessed with "bankable stars" rather than a gripping story, and reluctant to stray from idiosyncratic yet comfortable formulas that have for decades found favour in the domestic market.
Globally, Indian films have been seen by distributors as either suitable for Indian tastes, or the international market, but rarely for both.
Movies catering to India's mass audience are traditionally around three hours long; punctuated by numerous song and dance sequences, melodramatic in their acting style, and often reflective of conservative Indian social and family values. While they are circulated abroad by niche distributors, to areas with large South Asian populations, these "masala movies" are otherwise thought to have little international appeal.
Simultaneously, movies such as Deepa Mehta's trilogy of Fire , Earth , and Water , and Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding , which tackle socially challenging subjects with more naturalistic acting (and far fewer songs), have found critical and box office success on the art house circuit abroad, but had only limited audiences in India.
Yet Sandeep Bhargava of The Indian Film Company, says changing Indian tastes - especially among urban youth and the development of more multiplex screens in urban areas - are giving Bollywood fresh impetus to experiment more with socially and thematically challenging (and shorter) films that target more sophisticated, audiences.
Bollywood star Aamir Khan, for example, last year produced, directed and starred in a film about a boy suffering from dyslexia. A Wednesday , starring two classical but not bankable actors, was also a surprise hit on the Indian multiplex circuit, with its taut story of a vigilante against terror - and not a single song.
"2008 has been an eye-opener," says Mr Bhargava. "People are looking for content."
All this suggests that as Indian tastes change and the market segments, there will be a greater focus on script, ideas, content and urban themes.
"The next stage for India is a film which will become a global film, without abandoning its domestic market," says Mr Khanna.
Yet in the meantime, Kishore Lulla, chief executive of Eros International, a film company, thinks international demand for "masala" films is growing.
"Bollywood is where Hollywood was in the 1940s and 1950s," Mr Lulla said. "People wanted to get out and watch happy-go-lucky, larger-than-life escapist cinema.
"Today too, they want to forget their worries. We have recession, we have war - there is so much chaos. People want escapist cinema. That's what Bollywood is all about."
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